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Running on Empty: The Effects of Food Deprivation on Concentration and Perseverance

1. How does short-term food deprivation affect concentration on and perseverance with a difficult task ?
Problem/Objective
2. To compare if participants deprived of food for 24 hours will perform worse on a concentration test and a perseverance task than those deprived for 12 hours.
1. To gain a deeper understanding on the negative effects of food deprivation through empirical and reliable data.
2. To hopefully provide useful data for the Department of Education and the Philippine government on how going to school without eating a proper meal may affect the
Rationale concentration of students at school since a big majority of public school students belong to families below the poverty threshold.
3. This study may also help people undergoing very low calorie to even zero calorie diets to gain insight on how such extreme measures can affect their concentration and
persevarance at work or in their daily tasks.
1. To date, no study has tested perseverance, despite its importance in cognitive functioning. In fact, perseverance may be a better indicator than achievement tests in
assessing growth in learning and thinking abilities, as perseverance helps in solving complex problems.
2. Much of the research in the past has focused either on chronic starvation at one end of the continuum or on missing a single meal at the other end.
3. some of the findings have been contradictory. One study found that skipping breakfast impairs certain aspects of cognition, such as problem-solving abilities (Pollitt,
Lewis, Garza, & Shulman, 1983). However, other research by M. W. Green, N. A. Elliman, and P. J. Rogers (1995, 1997) has found that food deprivation ranging from
Research Gap
missing a single meal to 24 hours without eating does not significantly impair cognition.
4. Not all groups of people have been sufficiently studied. Studies have been done on 911 year-olds (Pollitt et al., 1983), obese subjects (Crumpton, Wine, & Drenick,
1966), college-age men and women (Green et al., 1995, 1996, 1997), and middle-age males (Kollar et al., 1964)
5. According to some researchers, most of the results so far indicate that cognitive function is not affected significantly by short-term fasting (Green et al., 1995, p. 246).
However, this conclusion seems premature due to the relative lack of research on cognitive functions such as concentration and perseverance
Design & Method Quantitative and Experimental
Fifty-one undergraduate-student volunteers (32 females, 19 males), some of whom received a small amount of extra credit in a college course. The mean college grade
Units of Analysis & Sampling point average (GPA) was 3.19. Potential participants were excluded if they were dieting, menstruating, or taking special medication. Those who were struggling with or had
struggled with an eating disorder were excluded, as were potential participants addicted to nicotine or caffeine.
1. Concentration speed and accuracy were measured using an online numbers-matching test (www.psychtests.com/tests/iq/concentration.html) that consisted of 26 lines of
25 numbers each. In 6 minutes, participants were required to find pairs of numbers in each line that added up to 10. Scores were calculated as the percentage of correctly
identified pairs out of a possible 120.
Research Instrument 2. Perseverance was measured with a puzzle that contained five octagonseach of which included a stencil of a specific object (such as an animal or a flower). The
octagons were to be placed on top of
each other in a specific way to make the silhouette of a rabbit. However, three of the shapes were slightly altered so that the task was impossible. Perseverance scores
were calculated as the number of minutes that a participant spent on the puzzle task before giving up.
Variable: Concentration
Measure: average concentration score was 77.78 (SD = 14.21), which was very good considering that anything over 50 percent is labeled good or above average.
Variables and Measures
Variable: Perseverance
Measure: The average time spent on the puzzle was 24.00 minutes (SD = 10.16), with a maximum of 40 minutes allowed.
1. At an initial meeting, participants gave informed consent. Each consent form contained an assigned identification number and requested the participants GPA. Students
were then informed that they would be notified by e-mail and telephone about their assignment to one of the three experimental groups.
2. Next, students were given an instruction sheet. These written instructions, which we also read aloud, explained the experimental conditions, clarified guidelines for the
food deprivation period, and specified the time and location of testing.
3. Participants were randomly assigned to one of these conditions using a matched-triplets design based on the GPAs collected at the initial meeting. This design was used
to control individual differences in cognitive ability.
4. Two days after the initial meeting, participants were informed of their group assignment and its condition and reminded that, if they were in a food-deprived group, they
should not eat anything after 10 a.m. the next day.
5. Participants from the control group were tested at 7:30 p.m. in a designated computer lab on the day the deprivation started. Those in the 12-hour group were tested at
Data Gathering
10 p.m. on that same day. Those in the 24-hour group were tested at 10:40 a.m. on the following day.
6. At their assigned time, participants arrived at a computer lab for testing. Each participant was given written testing instructions, which were also read aloud. The online
concentration test had already been loaded on the computers for participants before they arrived for testing, so shortly after they arrived they proceeded to complete the
test. Immediately after all participants had completed the test and their scores were recorded, participants were each given the silhouette puzzle and instructed how to
proceed. In addition, they were told that (1) they would have an unlimited amount of time to complete the task, and (2) they were not to tell any other participant whether
they had completed the puzzle or simply given up. This procedure was followed to prevent the group influence of some participants seeing others give up. Any participant
still working on the puzzle after 40 minutes was stopped to keep the time of the study manageable.
7. Immediately after each participant stopped working on the puzzle, he/she gave demographic information and completed a few manipulation-check items.
8. We then debriefed and dismissed each participant outside of the lab.
Participants deprived of food for 24 hours were expected to perform worse on a concentration test and a perseverance task than those deprived for 12 hours, who in turn
Hypothesis
were predicted to perform worse than those who were not deprived of food.
1. This study will only look into two aspects of cognition: Perseverance and Concentration. The other aspects of cognition such as reading comprehension or motivation will
not be part of the study.
Scope and Limitations
2. All the participants of the study are undergraduate students. There are no out-of-school participants in the study.
3. The weight of the participants and their economic status were also not taken into account in this study.

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